Evangelicals Must Reform Their Worship

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   ADRIEL SANCHEZ - There's a song that was, gosh, I forget the name, but essentially the words are, "Holy Spirit, you're welcome here." [sarcastically] Well, thanks very much. It's all about invoking and inviting God into his presence. But what you lose there is the objectivity of the fact that actually God is the sovereign King who is calling us to worship.

2. 00:20

   MICHAEL HORTON - Yes, that's right.

3. 00:21

   ADRIEL SANCHEZ - We're not the ones who are calling him down. He's the one who's calling us into his presence. And I like to say, the question is not, "Is God going to show up in worship?" It's, "Are you going to be there?" Are you going to be there?

4. 00:32

   MICHAEL HORTON - He's always going to be delivering his salvation.

5. 00:36

   ADRIEL SANCHEZ - He's there with his word, with his promises, with his presence, whether we feel the tinglies or not. The question is, are we going to lay hold of those things by faith?

6. 00:56

   SEAN - We are doing a series on spirituality and piety, and if we want to recover the heart of true— [FLAG 5] We need to recover a high view of worship. To help us do that, we are joined by Sola Media's own Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Adriel Sanchez is a minister at North Park Presbyterian Church in San Diego, California. He is also the host of Core Christianity with Sola Media, and he is the author of a new book, Why We Worship: Experiencing Heaven on Earth at Church.

7. 01:27

   ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Hi, Sean.

8. 01:28

   SEAN - Adriel, it is great to have you with us. And let's be honest, it's kind of like experiencing heaven on earth every time I listen to Core Christianity. So this is going to be a great, great time for us today.

9. 01:38

   ADRIEL SANCHEZ - [laughs] You're already not being honest, and we've just begun. It's always a lot of fun to get to hang with you guys. So good to be here.

10. 01:47

    SEAN - Well, we're glad you're joining us.

11. 01:48

    MICHAEL HORTON - And what a great subject. And the work that you have been doing on worship is certainly going to contribute a lot, I think, to our conversation here.

12. 01:58

    SEAN - Where I kind of want to start today is thinking a little bit about, how else to say this, the importance of liturgical worship. There seems to be a greater deal of interest around this right now. We keep hearing stories, and again, I'm not sure how much to rely on all the numbers that I hear, but a lot of people are leaving evangelicalism, and they're moving towards higher liturgical traditions like Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism.

13. 02:22

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Mm-hmm.

14. 02:23

    SEAN - And I think I have two questions about this, and maybe we'll take this one first. What do we in Reformation traditions have to say about sort of high liturgical worship? And why is it that perhaps so many people leave evangelicalism and just skip over the Reformation and go straight to these other traditions?

15. 02:39

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - I think, if we're just picking up on the second part of that question, I wonder if a lot of people who are in evangelical churches assume that this is Protestantism. This is what Protestantism is. So, the nondenominational church that I go to, this is as rich as the history gets. This is as rich as the theology gets. And then they go to a Roman Catholic church or an Eastern Orthodox church, and they're told, "Well, this is how we've been worshiping for 2,000 years."

16. 03:03

    SEAN - Yeah.

17. 03:03

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - "Nothing has changed." And they can see the iconography and smell the incense, and it feels very much like something holy and special is taking place. And so they get really excited about that.

18. And I think to some degree, they're also disillusioned, maybe, with a kind of worship that they've experienced growing up that can feel very consumeristic, that can feel like there's no real rhyme or reason to it. We're just doing this because it's the most convenient thing, or we think it's going to be what brings the most people in. And the reality is, in a lot of evangelical churches, that is kind of how worship and liturgy has been shaped, with some of that. So I think that there's some of it there. But Mike, I'd be

19. 03:44

    MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah. I think, first of all, when people hear the word liturgy, they might kind of cringe. It's like when they hear the word catechism, they think, "Oh, that's Catholic." No, actually, everybody, every Christian, has a liturgy.

20. 04:01

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

21. 04:02

    MICHAEL HORTON - A liturgy is a ritual performed out of a sense of fulfillment or in search of fulfillment. You could take all kinds of secular examples of that.

22. 04:15

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

23. 04:16

    MICHAEL HORTON - In the church, we are bringing a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, but also Christ is giving himself to us as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So I don't think that many evangelicals (I don't want to be blanket about it), many evangelicals are thinking about it in those terms. It's very flat, very non-transcendent, very much about me and my personal life and marriage and family today, and how I'm doing with my walk with Jesus today, or how can we save America today. It's all this-worldly.

24. And I think that people are looking, a lot of people, I don't know how many, some people raised in evangelical churches are looking for transcendence. They're looking for something with meaning and history and richness and depth. And as you say, they skip over the churches that came out of the Reformation. When we don't do things perfectly, we don't have a perfect understanding or practice of our own theology

25. 05:30

    MICHAEL HORTON - All the time. But at least these are traditions that are rooted in a transcendent God who acts in history, acts upon us, enters into the space where he's called us by name to be there. And he is the preacher. He is the baptizer. He is the food and drink for our salvation. God is giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. And I think when I was growing up in evangelical, it was doing, doing, doing, doing.

26. 06:07

    SEAN - Yeah.

27. 06:08

    MICHAEL HORTON - So the sermon was actually a talk about how I could be doing better. And then baptism was something I did to show I really meant it. And then the Lord's Supper was something that I experienced every leap year [laughs], because I needed an opportunity to check up and see how I'm doing with all that.

28. 06:36

    SEAN - Yeah.

29. 06:37

    MICHAEL HORTON - I would just beg evangelical brothers and sisters who are thinking about making that leap over the Reformation to check us out.

30. 06:45

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

31. 06:45

    SEAN - Yeah.

32. 06:46

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Mike, I think there are a couple of things there that are really good. One, just the fact that the word liturgy is not a bad word. It's actually in the Greek New Testament. It's in the book of Hebrews, referring to Christ's priestly service. There, the idea of worship or public worship. And I know sometimes people will say the word liturgy means "the work of the people," or this sort of public service, because it wasn't just an ecclesiastical word. It was a word that was used more broadly as well. But I think it's good to be reminded of the fact that regardless of the kind of church you go to or the denomination you're in, every church has a liturgy.

33. 07:21

    SEAN - Yeah.

34. 07:22

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - That could look like an upbeat song and then some announcements and then maybe four more songs and a sermon that maybe has the Lord's Supper attached to it, maybe not, a benediction. Every church has a liturgy. And I think a really good question for us to be asking ourselves is, what is it that shapes our worship?

35. 07:41

    SEAN - Right.

36. 07:42

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - What are the things behind why we do the things that we do on a Sunday morning? That's an important question for us to be asking. And the other thing, Mike, that I really appreciated you saying (and this is something I think that we would all agree with) desperately needs to be recovered today, is how do we help people understand that when the church gathers, it is the divine service, that we are being washed and fed and served by Jesus first and foremost?

37. 08:10

    MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah.

38. 08:10

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - It's like John 13. Jesus is washing the feet of the disciples, and Peter says, "You're never going to wash my feet." And Jesus says, "Watch me." "I have to wash your feet, or you have no part in me." And I think, like you said, for many, many Christians in North America, they're sort of tired of worship because they've been brought up with worship or liturgies that focus a lot on you as the primary actor. And so—

39. 08:39

    MICHAEL HORTON - Pragmatism.

40. 08:40

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - You have to conjure up God's presence by your sincere singing and worship. You have to, like you were saying, Mike, do. And it's not that we aren't given encouragement and exhortations through the context of the preached word, but it's that first and foremost, we are coming together because we desperately need to be washed and served by Jesus. And boy, I think if we recover just that right there, that would be huge for so many people.

41. 09:10

    SEAN - I think you're right. I think you made a really interesting point about how you have to kind of conjure up the right emotion, the right feeling. You come to worship and you sing and you're surrounded. I remember we used to go to services like this when I was in high school and college, 'cause that's where the young ladies may have been. [laughs] And they would have people standing around me with their arms up in certain positions and emotional looks on their faces. And I'm just looking around like I'm an old German Lutheran kid already. My hands are this high up [gestures], and I feel uncomfortable, like I'm sinning. Am I doing this the wrong way?

42. 09:42

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - It's such a waste, huh?

43. 09:43

    SEAN - Yeah, I was that guy. You feel like it's up to you to make God show up.

44. 09:48

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

45. 09:49

    SEAN - And really, I know we do this in our tradition, and I'm assuming it's the same for you guys. The belief is, the German word for this was Gottesdienst, the service of God, which primarily means God's coming to serve us. And then we respond with prayer and praise and thanksgiving. And so the entire service was this sort of pattern of time in which God speaks, we respond. God speaks, we respond. God gives, we praise. Back and forth, back and forth. Word and prayer, word and prayer, sacrament and gift and response.

46. 10:25

    SEAN - So there's something we do there, but what we do there is—

47. 10:28

    MICHAEL HORTON - Responsive.

48. 10:29

    SEAN - Yeah. It's what a kid does on Christmas morning after he gets a gift. He says "thank you" for what he's received. I hate to make this analogy, but I do think there's something to it. To me, it's the difference of Elijah on the mountain versus the priests of Baal: the priests of Baal doing everything they possibly can to capture the attention of their gods, whereas Elijah just trusts the Lord's promise and prays, and God shows up. It seems like we show up expecting God to deliver a gift, versus we show up and try and capture his attention with our performance—

49. 11:03

    SEAN - So he comes down to visit.

50. 11:04

    MICHAEL HORTON - And it reminds me of Romans 10, where Paul makes that contrast between the righteousness which is by faith and the righteousness which is by works. The righteousness which is by works says, "How can I go ascend into heaven to bring him down, or descend into the depths as if to bring him up from the dead again?" But Christ is right in front of you.

51. 11:34

    SEAN - Yeah.

52. 11:34

    MICHAEL HORTON - Christ is as near as the word of grace that we are preaching to you. That is a word I think people need, all of us, but especially the evangelical world needs to hear. Stop trying to whirl God down from his throne or bring Jesus back from the dead and try to make things alive in your church.

53. 12:00

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

54. 12:00

    MICHAEL HORTON - The Holy Spirit has a long success record with his word. And he's going to form a community of Spirit-filled people because they are filled with his word.

55. 12:13

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - There was a book that was published, I think a couple years ago now, called A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship. I think that's the title.

56. 12:20

    MICHAEL HORTON - [jokingly] Three pages?

57. 12:21

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - [laughs] Yeah, three pages. No, no, it's actually a great book, because it does a good job of outlining the theological movements and streams that have really shaped modern worship services in North America in particular. And we were just talking about how there is this sort of sense in a lot of churches that we gotta do the work of getting God to show up. This is why a lot of times you'll talk to people, and you'll hear people say, "It didn't feel like God showed up to church today."

58. 12:50

    SEAN - Yeah.

59. 12:51

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Well, where does that idea come from? One of the places where that came from: you think of the early days of what's come to be known as the praise and worship movement, sort of born out of North American Pentecostalism in Canada, different parts of the United States. But basically, there was this movement that said, looking at passages like Psalm 22:3, God inhabits the praises of his people. The main way we experience God in worship is through praises and through songs. And so if we're going to experience the presence of God, it's going to be through the music. And this is where you started to get the birth of the worship leader.

60. 13:26

    SEAN - Yeah.

61. 13:26

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - And these long sets of worship where the worship leader essentially was tasked with ushering the people in the church into the presence of God. How do you do that? Well, you do that through song selection. And I remember back when I was in Calvary Chapel, where God first brought me into the church, I remember these long— You begin really upbeat, the sort of happy, clappy praise and worship songs, and then you get into the more worshipful stuff where you're now entering into the Holy of Holies.

62. 13:56

    SEAN - Yeah.

63. 13:56

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - And this was how you experience the presence of God. And a lot of people just sort of embraced that and began—

64. 14:03

    MICHAEL HORTON - Even called it the worship time. I've heard—

65. 14:05

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Exactly.

66. 14:05

    MICHAEL HORTON - I've heard, "Okay, now is the worship time." And that means plug in all the equipment. Music's getting started.

67. 14:14

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - That's why today, when somebody comes to me and says (and I'm sure you've experienced this as well), "What's the worship like at your church?" I know what they mean is, "How is the music?"

68. 14:26

    MICHAEL HORTON - [crosstalk] "What style are you preaching?"

69. 14:27

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - They're not talking about—

70. 14:28

    SEAN - "Is it traditional?"

71. 14:28

    MICHAEL HORTON - "Is it contemporary?"

72. 14:29

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - "Are you preaching from a lectionary, or expository preaching? Or how often do you take Communion?" They're thinking, "What kind of songs do you sing?"

73. 14:37

    MICHAEL HORTON - "What's the vibe?"

74. 14:38

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - "What's the vibe?" And so that movement just sort of blew up and was highly influential in North America. So all of a sudden there's this shift where, as people are thinking about the presence of God in worship, they're no longer asking questions about the Lord's Supper, Christ's presence in the Supper. The focus isn't on the preaching. It's, the primary way we're going to meet with God is by getting him to come down through our praise and worship. That's how we're going to feel him. That's how we're going to experience him.

75. 15:07

    MICHAEL HORTON - I've heard that language, actually, of bringing him down.

76. 15:09

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - And that's the music. There's a song that was, my gosh, I forget the name, but essentially the words are, "Holy Spirit, you're welcome here." [sarcastically] Well, thanks very much. It's all about invoking and inviting God into his presence. But what you lose there is the objectivity of the fact that actually God is the sovereign King who is calling us to worship.

77. 15:32

    SEAN - Yes, that's right.

78. 15:33

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - We're not the ones who are calling him down. He's the one who's calling us into his presence. And I like to say, the question is not, "Is God going to show up in worship?" It's, "Are you going to be there?" Are you going to be there?

79. 15:46

    MICHAEL HORTON - He's always going to be delivering his salvation.

80. 15:49

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - He's there with his word, with his promises, with his presence, whether we feel the tinglies or not. The question is, are we going to lay hold of those things by faith?

81. 16:02

    MICHAEL HORTON - And that's actually really encouraging, because with the hype and everything around so much of contemporary worship, always constantly trying to, through that pulling down of God, you're constantly trying to assure yourself that you are okay with him.

82. 16:24

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

83. 16:24

    MICHAEL HORTON - And in the kind of worship approach we're talking about, God is working and doing and acting and giving even on days when I don't feel like going to church, but I'm there. I got

84. 16:44

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

85. 16:44

    MICHAEL HORTON - And then the sermon was okay. And then, how was the music? Well, we sang a few songs, and we took Communion. All of those points, the seemingly mundane points, even boring points, were like seven or eight times God was getting at me.

86. 17:13

    SEAN - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

87. 17:15

    MICHAEL HORTON - He was getting to me with his presence. And I don't have to feel that. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

88. 17:26

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - I remember you one time, Bob, saying, I think you were talking about somebody in your church who was gone for a while and came back and said, "Man, I just need to hear about the forgiveness of sins," because I'm hearing it again and again in the absolution, in the sermon, in the Lord's Supper.

89. 17:41

    MICHAEL HORTON - Benediction.

90. 17:41

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah. It was just encouraging, because, Mike, here we are talking about the fact that worship is delivering these gifts to us: these promises, this grace that God is speaking to us from heaven. And people are hungry for that.

91. 17:56

    SEAN - Yes.

92. 17:56

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - I think this is another one of the reasons why you do see lots of people falling out of church, because they feel like, "Well, the things that my church has to offer, I can just get at home." And how often—

93. 18:08

    MICHAEL HORTON - It's also true.

94. 18:08

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yep. 100%. In fact, so much of, I think, contemporary worship, modern liturgy— And when I say contemporary worship, I'm not trying to knock contemporary praise music or whatever. I'm thinking more in terms of this movement, this liturgical movement. So much of what we see in churches is a domestication of worship. How can we make even the church service or the sanctuary look like your living room? We'll put the big screens up there, we'll get the comfy seats, we'll even have an espresso machine outside, right? And it feels very much like you're just at home.

95. 18:41

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - So we're trying to give you the sort of living room experience.

96. 18:45

    MICHAEL HORTON - And then, okay, why can't I just stay in my home?

97. 18:48

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Exactly. That's exactly right. And you think about worship in Scripture, and it's not a dirge. It's not a somber thing. But you think of the exhortation that we get in Hebrews 12 to worship God with reverence and awe. Or Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu struck down because they offer strange fire to the Lord. Worship in Scripture is a serious thing, because it is an encounter with a holy God. And we've almost lost that completely, I think, in a lot of churches today, because what we want to give to people is something safe and comfortable and relatable and that they feel like they can identify with.

98. 19:29

    ADRIEL SANCHEZ - We're not trying to expose them to the holy God.

99. 19:34

    MICHAEL HORTON - I've said, I think, that there's a loss of transcendence (I think we'd agree with that), loss of transcendence in a lot of evangelical worship. Let's just say in a lot of churches.

100. 19:44

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

101. 19:46

     MICHAEL HORTON - Loss of transcendence. God is my buddy. Comfy, comfy. So that means I don't have to come through a mediator. Why? Why do I need to come to the Father through a mediator? We lose transcendence, but then we know we crave it. We crave transcendence. We were made for transcendence. And so we manufacture it.

102. 20:09

     MICHAEL HORTON - We manufacture and package a fake transcendence that isn't really God breaking in, but us trying to bring him down.

103. 20:18

     SEAN - It's a manipulated emotion.

104. 20:20

     MICHAEL HORTON - Exactly. And may I say, that's not very different from Roman Catholicism. So if you're going to convert, if you're going to skip over the whole Reformation tradition, it's not that surprising.

105. 20:35

     SEAN - Yep. Awful lot of choreography on both sides.

106. 20:38

     MICHAEL HORTON - A lot of choreography. It really depends on your tastes.

107. 20:42

     SEAN - Yeah. Well, that's, I think, the concern I have. I hear a lot in my circles, "Look, the traditional liturgies are becoming more popular. This is something we need to embrace." And I don't necessarily disagree with that, but this isn't a conversation about what's trendy right now, what are the tastes. Worship does transcend taste. What's the old line? I think it was, of all people, Francis Chan. Someone said to him after a service something like, "Boy, that worship just didn't really speak to me today." And he said to them, "Well, we weren't really speaking to you."

108. 21:15

     SEAN - "So we weren't worshiping you. So that's probably why not." [laughs] Which is a pretty good line. We aren't just following a trend. When you look at the Reformation (I can only speak to the Lutheran liturgies; I don't understand your liturgies as well as I ought to), these are things that are formed and shaped by the word of God. They flow from the word of God.

109. 21:36

     SEAN - We're basically teaching ourselves the Scriptures as we worship. I'll never forget the worship class I had in college where the professor took us through our liturgy, and he was pointing out every time we're quoting the Scriptures. And I realized I know a lot more Bible than I realized, because of it being sung into my heart and into my brain for the course of 18 years at that point.

110. There's something going on here where God is coming to us to form us as his people and to send us out into the world different. And that's why this hour or two hours or whatever it is you have every week is different. It is unique. Something should be happening to you here that's not happening anywhere else. It'd be great if it was happening everywhere else, but it isn't.

111. 22:19

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Mm-hmm.

112. 22:20

     SEAN - You're getting something here from God, which is gift and blessing, call to repentance, that you're not in control of.

113. 22:29

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - This is why the shape of our worship service or liturgy is so important, why it is so important that we're not just trying to jump onto some bandwagon ("This is the cool thing right now"), but we're letting Scripture, as much as we can, as much as it does direct us, give us principles and wisdom and guidance for what it means to worship God with reverence and awe. And a lot of people don't realize this, but our worship shapes us and forms us. And when you look at some of the early Christological debates of church history, it's interesting how often the orthodox would use the worship of the church as an argument against the heretics. It's like, "Hey, you guys—"

114. 23:13

     SEAN - Oh, interesting.

115. 23:14

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - "You guys want to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, because you know that the church has this established way of worshiping. But you deny the deity of the Holy Spirit or the deity of Christ. Or you'll sing hymns to Christ as to God, but you deny those things." And the reason even the heretics were doing this is because there was this real established sense of the importance of worship, the importance of song, and what we should be doing.

116. 23:43

     MICHAEL HORTON - "May the word of Christ dwell in you richly, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, teaching and admonishing each other." We don't think of singing very often as—

117. 23:53

     SEAN - Admonishing.

118. 23:54

     MICHAEL HORTON - Priesthood of all believers, teaching and admonishing.

119. 23:58

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Or even just in the New Testament, how often people will say, "Well, it looks like here Paul is quoting from an early Christian creed or hymn or something like that," in order to make a doctrinal point or a theological point. And so this gets at why it actually is a big deal how we worship God. That shouldn't surprise anybody when you read places like Leviticus 10 or Hebrews 12, or about Ananias and Sapphira, or 1 Corinthians 10. But it gets back to the fact that these are things that I think have been lost and that we don't think about.

120. 24:30

     SEAN - Well, I think you're right, because music has just simply become— It's not admonishment, it's not teaching, it's expression. It's emotive.

121. 24:39

     MICHAEL HORTON - About me.

122. 24:40

     SEAN - About me. And so when I worship and praise, I'm telling God what I want him to hear. And that is idolatrous. It's self-idolatry.

123. 24:48

     MICHAEL HORTON - It's not what Jesus is saying.

124. 24:49

     SEAN - God is interested in me. I'm not interested so much in him. We become the center of the story. But with the liturgies we have, we're not removed from the story, but we're drawn into the greater story. So I love when we were preparing for the Lord's Supper in our church, we sing a song where we say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth is filled with his glory. Hosanna, hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." And what we've done there is we've taken Isaiah 6, and we've taken Palm Sunday.

125. 25:18

     SEAN - And we said, see, now we're being brought into the same God who Isaiah saw in the temple and who rode into Jerusalem on the donkey to the cries of "Hosanna." We're now joining Isaiah and the crowds as we prepare to receive the same Christ who's coming to us. And so now you're being drawn into something that is scripturally formed, but you're being changed. You're not just telling God what you think or what you feel; you're being brought into something far greater than yourself.

126. 25:45

     MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah, "with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven," singing, "Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty."

127. 25:51

     SEAN - Yeah.

128. 25:52

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - That's not just a Lutheran thing. Singing the Sanctus prior to taking the Lord's Supper, from Isaiah 6, is something that you see in liturgy pretty early on in the history of the church, in part because they recognized that when we partake of the Lord's Supper, somehow, mystically, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we're being carried up into heaven to feed on the body and blood of Christ, which are right there at the right hand of— [laughs] This is basically the Calvinist view of the Lord's Supper, right? That's what I was getting at. So it's wonderful that you guys do that in the Lutheran liturgy.

129. 26:26

     SEAN - [laughter] Well, we would say—

130. 26:27

     MICHAEL HORTON - No, that was good.

131. 26:28

     SEAN - That was really cute.

132. 26:29

     MICHAEL HORTON - That was very subtly done.

133. 26:30

     SEAN - I will say, we would probably say this is where heaven's coming down to us.

134. 26:35

     MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah. Where Christ is—

135. 26:36

     SEAN - There's not so much us ascending as Christ descending. But nonetheless, this is an interesting thing that does take place in the Reformation in these liturgical conversations. Luther wasn't looking to change the church. He was looking to get back to what's the church done faithfully. So when you look at his liturgical reforms, he's removing Mary and the saints from certain things, but it looks pretty similar to lots of liturgical rites from before.

136. 27:01

     MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah, what things looked like before the medieval popes messed it up.

137. 27:03

     SEAN - Exactly right.

138. 27:05

     MICHAEL HORTON - On that descending thing, I was going to bring that up a little earlier too. One of the things that historians have pointed out: it's not just Calvin's view. Peter Martyr Vermigli had a lot of influence on Calvin's thinking there, and Martin Bucer and Thomas Cranmer, other reformers, saw it as a U.

139. 27:27

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Hmm.

140. 27:30

     MICHAEL HORTON - They emphasized, with Luther, the downward descent, the incarnation, the Christ present here for you. But as Calvin put it, it's a descent that is kind of an ascent—

141. 27:48

     SEAN - Hmm.

142. 27:50

     MICHAEL HORTON - —in which the Holy Spirit unites us to his glorified, deified humanity, so that (and he quotes Cyril of Alexandria) the richness of his humanity is transmuted into us, or transferred to us, something like that. It's a really—

143. 28:19

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - [jokingly] Just not transubstantiated.

144. 28:20

     MICHAEL HORTON - No, but very mystical. It's a very mystical idea. And it's the Holy Spirit. It's not that it's only something spiritual that we receive. It's that it's by the Holy Spirit that we receive the whole Christ. And not just in Communion, but in baptism and in the word and in the absolution and everything.

145. 28:45

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - This idea of the heavenly nature of meeting with God in worship, you definitely see it in the Old Testament. You think of the tabernacle or the temple, which is just sort of like a replica of the heavenly temple, and the priest is going in there, and it's like you're being transported into this new place. You imagine the priest in there: it's dark, there's the glow of the candlelight with smoke, and you can see on the curtains these angels that are kind of floating. It was like you were being transported into heaven, right?

146. 29:18

     SEAN - Yeah.

147. 29:19

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - And when you think about worship under the New Covenant, obviously those ceremonial rites have been abrogated. We don't have that anymore. But when the author to the Hebrews talks about what takes place when we gather for worship (it blew my mind the first time it really hit me), Hebrews 12, talking about us coming together before the heavenly Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, a myriad of saints and angels, to hear that better word of the gospel, the fact that we've been justified. This is what is happening in the context of worship. We are gathering around the throne of God by faith, together with the whole church, even the church triumphant.

148. 29:57

     MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah, even the angels.

149. 29:59

     SEAN - Even angels, yeah.

150. 29:59

     MICHAEL HORTON - It's like, what? And the thing is, I'm so glad you brought up Hebrews, because what happens if you want to go back to a kind of liturgical worship that has sacrifices for sin—

151. 30:20

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Mm-hmm.

152. 30:21

     MICHAEL HORTON - —that has priestly offices of a sacrificial nature—

153. 30:28

     SEAN - Mm-hmm.

154. 30:30

     MICHAEL HORTON - —that has smoke and incense and— Going back to these things? Well, ask the writer to the Hebrews, because he was actually trying to dissuade people, Jewish Christians, from going back to Judaism, precisely because it's easier to believe what you see.

155. 30:55

     SEAN - It is interesting, isn't it? You do have this sort of liturgical (maybe it's not the right word) but this worship-liturgical narrative that begins in the garden. The garden is this place where God communes with his people. The tabernacle and the temple are built as the place where God will be present among his people. And then the Lord shows up.

156. 31:17

     MICHAEL HORTON - And the tree of life is the sacrament.

157. 31:18

     SEAN - That's right. And you have the Lord who shows up then and says, "Destroy this temple, and I'll rebuild it in three days," referring to his body, because he is the Word of God made present among us. What does John say? He tabernacles among us. Here is the presence of God. And now, as we receive word and sacrament, this is where the word is coming to us. In all of these sort of biblical instances, heaven is invading earth, and we're receiving gifts.

158. And so as we come, we don't just come as an individual to express ourselves, but to join all the saints and all the angels and my brothers and sisters there in the sanctuary (which is not necessarily as thrilling, but it's far more ordinarily beautiful) when I have my brothers and sisters around me who I've prayed for and I've loved, and have loved me and supported me and been there for me. And now we gather around the altar to receive the gifts that Christ has to give all of us, that not only forgive our sins, but unite us together in the faith.

159. 32:15

     SEAN - And that prepares us then for the final day, when heaven comes down, right?

160. 32:19

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

161. 32:20

     SEAN - And Christ establishes the new creation. All of these are glimpses of and participation in the realities Christ has won for us on the cross. And it's a joyful thing to be a part of. And yeah, it might feel ordinary. And yeah, maybe if you come to my church, I'm going to pick a hymn that you can't sing really well. [laughs] But man, we are participating in something far more beautiful than just a feeling we get to have if they hit the right note this week.

162. 32:44

     MICHAEL HORTON - Yeah. Come to church next Sunday because God said so.

163. 32:52

     SEAN - Yeah.

164. 32:52

     MICHAEL HORTON - And the God who said so isn't calling you so that he can beat you up again.

165. 32:59

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Mm-hmm.

166. 33:00

     MICHAEL HORTON - He's calling you because you need to repent and trust in his Son for your salvation. You need to be brokenhearted and contrite. You need to— But that will happen to you. It's not something you need to bring to the service. That will happen to you through God serving you, and then you will once again be refreshed by the forgiveness of sins and pardon. But again, I have to emphasize, don't go looking for that experience.

167. 33:32

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Right.

168. 33:34

     MICHAEL HORTON - Go looking for God, because he has promised, just because he's promised to do it, regardless of your resistance. He has promised to be there to give you stuff, and he will do it because he's promised it.

169. 33:52

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

170. 33:53

     MICHAEL HORTON - And go where God has promised to be. Don't try to find him outside the places he said, "I'll be there." And that's great assurance. You can know, "I am assured that he's there for me and giving me those gifts" on days that I feel it powerfully and leave crying. On days I say, "What time is it? The sermon's kind of going long." [laughs] He's doing it anyway, regardless of my weakness.

171. 34:26

     SEAN - Yeah. Rod Rosenbladt [FLAG 34] used to say, when it comes to your justification, the only thing you bring to the table is your heart, which is filled with sin and indigestion, or sin and cholesterol. That's what it was. And I sort of think to myself, what is your motive for going to church on Sunday? Well, it doesn't matter. Whatever you're bringing is probably sin and cholesterol. You bring that to the table. And that's why we open our service with a confession and absolution: a time to lay out in front of the Lord all of your sins and to hear from him. And the Lord Jesus says, "He who hears you hears me."

172. 35:00

     SEAN - "Hear that your sins are the ones that are forgiven, and I forgive you in his stead and by his command." [FLAG 30] And now you begin to sing, because your heart's been freed. And then that's the pattern that's set for the rest of the morning.

173. 35:11

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Yeah.

174. 35:12

     SEAN - But that then begins to shape not just your morning, but the way (and this is kind of what we're talking about) this begins to shape the way you view the Christian life. You go to bed at night and you're like, "Man, I can't believe I did it again. I can't. I thought I got over that." And yet in your ears is ringing, "I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." And if you forget, show up again next Sunday, because it'll be there again for you. And it's not just for the forgiveness. There's so much more than that. But boy, it's not a bad thing to have, right? It's not a bad thing to have ringing in your ears.

175. 35:49

     SEAN - There's this great scene in the first Lord of the Rings book where they've just come from Tom Bombadil's house, and they go out and they're sort of lost in the wilderness.

176. 36:02

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - The Barrow-wights.

177. 36:03

     SEAN - The Barrow-wights come, and it's frightening; it's terrifying them. But suddenly, in the back of their mind, they hear Tom Bombadil's words echoing in their ears. And I think that's what liturgical worship does. It gets Tom Bombadil's words in it , and it makes them bold. And then they know how to stand up against the things that are frightening them.

178. When you have ringing in your ears throughout the week ("Your sins are forgiven," "Take and eat, given for you," the songs of the people around you, knowing that Christ is for you, his face is shining on you, he's being gracious to you, the words of the benediction), you can face those things. And those things cling to you even when you can't necessarily cling to them.

179. 36:42

     SEAN - Those words get in your system, and they cling to you when you're facing the difficulties of life.

180. 36:47

     MICHAEL HORTON - Amen.

181. 36:48

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - Just briefly, as we've been talking about worship and liturgy and the different kinds of liturgies, I think that we've all experienced— It's easy to critique and to criticize these other movements. And I think there's a lot of room for that. But I think what each of us would want to do is just say, man, God has given us something so rich in his word and in the worship of the church that has been lost.

182. This is what happened in the medieval church, right? Where you have essentially the heart of the gospel that's being clouded by these rituals that are not to be found anywhere in Scripture and are keeping people actually from the substance of what God wants to deliver to us in worship. And we see that again in our day too. It maybe doesn't look the same, but it's the same problem. And so the continual call to recover both the heart of the gospel, the heart of worship that is pleasing to the Lord, and to say, man, God has given us something so good, so rich, and it's something that all of us desperately need. And so we need to dig into that.

183. 37:59

     MICHAEL HORTON - Yep.

184. 37:59

     ADRIEL SANCHEZ - And our churches need to dig into that. Our pastors need to dig into that, so that they can deliver it to the people in front of them. Man, that's what we want to see. We want to see that recovered. And because at the end of the day, it's what sustains us in the midst of a fallen world.